


Bucky vs. Coffee

by Rainne



Series: Bucky vs. the 21st Century [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Coffee, Gen, Pumpkin spice everything, sweet life giving nectar of the gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 13:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19357837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: Alternate title: Bucky's Adventures in Caffeine IntakeFull disclosure: I do not like pumpkin or pumpkin spice. More for all of you.





	Bucky vs. Coffee

There was a time when coffee was a warm, sharp, rich thing that warmed the hands and the insides and served as a prop for long conversations with friends over a table at the automat.

There was a time when coffee was a bitter thing boiled over a campfire, mixed with chicory or other kinds of pollutants, still warming the hands and the insides, _but at what cost?_

There was a time when.

Coffee was one of the first little pleasures of life that Bucky rediscovered on his return to society. Steve and Sam kept the kitchen stocked with several varieties of really good coffee. Some of them had flavors in them like vanilla and chocolate; some of them were from Hawai’i and some from South America and some from other places farther away; some of them had hilarious names like Kicking Horse or Death Wish. (That last one was one of Bucky’s favorites.) The point was, there was _a lot_ of coffee in the house. Steve and Sam both drank it like water, and Bucky picked up the habit from them fairly quickly.

When he started taking walks around the neighborhood - at first strategically, and then just because it was nice to be outside in the sunshine - he discovered that there were coffee shops _everywhere._ There were several Starbucks locations, of course, but there were also independent stores with names like The Jumping Bean or Brew U or Back to the Grind. Some of these shops weren’t bad; some of them were beyond reckoning. Bucky pondered his options for days before finally choosing one store and walking in, studying the menu, and ordering the first thing that sounded palatable.

Mocha frappe turned out to be excessively good, and it became Bucky’s go-to drink when he struggled with the overwhelming number of options available (which was often). Still, even if he defaulted to the mocha more often than not, he still tried out other drinks as often as he was able to make the choices. It helped that there were different specials every day; he tried a rose and pistachio latte (good), chili horchata (not as spicy as it sounded, so, decent), and a coconut-lavender cappuccino (whoever thought of it should have been arrested). He tried varieties of cold brew and espresso, frappes and even various kinds of teas. Then, in mid-October, he was confronted by something entirely new.

“Pumpkin spice?” he asked the barista at Cafe Kaffee. “Who the hell puts pumpkin in coffee?”

“No, it’s not _pumpkin_ ,” the barista replied, grinning at him. “It’s pumpkin _spice._ It’s got, like, cinnamon and brown sugar and stuff in it.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. “So there’s not really pumpkin in it?”

“No, there’s pumpkin in it. Just not a lot.” The barista tilted their head at him. “Tell you what. Try one. On the house. You like it, you make an Instagram post about us. You don’t like it, no charge. Fair?”

“Fair,” Bucky agreed, nodding. He stepped aside and grabbed a seat, waiting until the barista called his name before making his way to the counter and taking the to-go cup. It was emblazoned with the coffee shop’s logo.

The barista grinned. “Down the hatch!”

Laughing, Bucky took a sip. He held it in his mouth for a second, focusing on the blending of the flavors on his tongue, before swallowing and blinking at the barista. “Wow,” he said.

They grinned. “Good, yeah?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Bucky replied. “I like that.” He pulled out his phone and thumbed open the Instagram app, taking a picture of the logo on the cup and posting it with the caption _Just found out about pumpkin spice latte. I like it! I like this shop, too._

He showed them the post once it was made, and they grinned even wider. “Awesome. Thanks!”

“Hey, thank you,” Bucky replied. “I’ll definitely want one of these again.”

By the time he got home, the coffee was almost gone, and he was wondering if he could make one at home. He thumbed his Instagram app as he climbed the stairs to his stoop and then paused, blinking at the screen as he pulled his keys out. He let himself in, kicked his shoes off, and padded into the living room. “Hey, Sam?” he said. “What’s a basic bitch?”

Sam chortled. “It’s a white girl that only likes basic stuff. Like Ugg boots and _Friends_ and pumpkin spice lattes.”

Bucky looked down at his cup. “What’s wrong with pumpkin spice lattes? They’re good.”

“Oh my god, are you becoming a basic bitch?” Sam exclaimed.

“Well, since I don’t know what Ugg boots are and you know full well that I’ve never seen _Friends_ , I’m guessing not. But this coffee is good and I want more of it.” Bucky checked his comments feed again. “Looks like this is a bad thing. Don’t understand why they’d sell it if it was a bad thing.”

“It’s not,” Sam said, sitting up and suddenly looking a lot more sympathetic. “I was actually teasing you. The thing about a basic bitch - or about anything being called basic at all, really - is that it’s -” He paused, trying to think of how to explain the term. As Bucky came and sat down, Sam continued, “Stuff that’s basic is super mainstream. It’s really popular - everybody likes it. And this actually applies pretty specifically to stuff that’s super popular among girls - or rather, young women - in their teens and twenties. Like pumpkin spice lattes or Ugg boots or, I don’t know, pole dancing classes or whatever. It’s stuff that all the other girls are doing, so it’s basic, see?”

“That...” Bucky paused, and then his eyebrows drew together. “That’s really fuckin rude.”

Sam considered this. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is. Both to you and to the girls who like that stuff.”

“I mean, if it’s popular, that’s for a reason, right? This coffee is popular because it’s _good_ , not because it’s stupid or something.”

“You’re right,” Sam said carefully, watching as Bucky worked through it in his head. And then he blinked when Bucky raised his phone and took a quick selfie of his best unimpressed expression. He pulled out his own phone and waited for Bucky to finish posting before he opened his own Instagram app and navigated to Bucky’s post to read the caption.

 _If you called me basic on my last post, fuck you,_ it read. _Pumpkin spice latte is good, and you can take your basic insults and shove ‘em up your ass. You wanna make fun of people for liking stuff that’s good or fun or comfortable or whatever, you come see me face to face and we’ll have a little talk about it. And if you’re just here to make fun of what I post, you can fuck right off._

“Right on,” Sam said. “Way to tell ‘em.”

“Damn right,” Bucky replied. “That’s some misogynistic bullshit right there.”

Sam stared at him. “And you’ve discovered modern feminism, I see.”

“The barista at Cafe Kaffee recommended me some good podcasts,” Bucky replied. “Wanna listen to some?”


End file.
